Conclusions
In the eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, international maritime ventures were undertaken by a variety of peoples who had developed or absorbed to varying degrees the knowledge required to build and use seagoing ships. However, based on its own specific needs and capabilities, each culture seems to have developed its own—perhaps unique—relationship with the sea.
Egypt’s interests in the Mediterranean were concentrated on the political and economic subjugation of the Syro-Canaanite coast. The Egyptians do not appear to have been explorers. They were content to ply three main routes: in the Mediterranean to the Syro-Canaanite coast and in the Red Sea to Punt and to the southwest coast of Sinai. There is no concrete evidence at present to indicate that Egyptian ships sailed any farther during the Bronze Age.
Egypt’s Mediterranean seafaring ended with the demise of its domination in Asia. Already evident in the tale of Wenamun, this trend was to continue into later times, when the Egyptians hired Phoenicians to do their seafaring for them. A main incentive for the Egyptians to venture out into the Mediterranean was the need for high-quality wood for ship construction and other purposes. Such wood was unavailable in the Nile valley during the Pharaonic period but common in Lebanon. This was apparently the primary, although certainly not the only, reason for Egypt’s early trade connections with Byblos.
Egypt entered the New Kingdom period using a developed version of a seagoing ship that had been evolving for over a millennium, and perhaps much longer. These vessels appear in a state of change at Deir el Bahri. They probably had a protean, evolving keel and were likely to have been one of the types of ships on which the Egyptians voyaged into the Mediterranean. The adoption of foreign construction techniques seems to have received a strong impetus under Thutmose III, a result of his need for reliable transports to support Egypt’s Asiatic conquests.
Egypt’s ventures into the Red Sea required an incredible amount of effort even before the sea voyage itself began. The ships were built on the Nile, dismantled, hauled overland through the Eastern Desert, and rebuilt on the shores of the Red Sea. The near “assembly kit” organization of the Cheops ships illustrates how this might have been accomplished. This process emphasizes the incredible (to our modern minds) value placed by the ancient Egyptians on the commodities available in Sinai and Punt. This effort expended in mercantile contacts in the Red Sea with Punt is paralleled in the later trading practices of Solomon and Hiram with the equally elusive land of Ophir.
The excavations at Wadi Gawasis have made a valuable contribution to understanding Egyptian seafaring practices in the Red Sea. Yet much still remains unclear. Of particular interest would be the future investigation of the pharaonic port identified by W. F. Albright near Abu Zneima on the southwest coast of in Sinai.
The Syro-Canaanite littoral supplies the clearest picture of a corporate trading power that played a significant—perhaps primary—part in Late Bronze Age maritime shipping, particularly during the fourteenth to thirteenth centuries. There are repeated references to ships with valuable cargoes. Syro-Canaanite ships sailed to Egypt, Cyprus, Cilicia, and the Aegean. The smattering of evidence for a code of maritime conduct along this coast further enhances this view. So, also, do the clearly merchant nature of the ships depicted in Egyptian tomb paintings and the repeated connection in the texts to Syro-Canaanite ships bearing valuable cargoes of trade goods.
The Kenamun wall painting is the most detailed extant depiction of a Late Bronze Age Syro-Canaanite seagoing ship; yet, it leaves much to be desired. We can guess at—but never be quite sure of—the Egyptianizing elements with which the artists have saturated these vessels.
Probably, the artists of Kenamun and Nebamun worked from copybooks. They sought to create a wall painting based on accepted art forms and were not making an ethnological study of contemporary seacraft. Created under strict art canons, the depictions of the Egyptian artists were pleasing to their contemporaries but lack the accuracy that the modern student might wish. Furthermore, the artists seem to have lacked a technical knowledge of the ships themselves. Keftiu ships were apparently Syro-Canaanite craft on the run to the Aegean: perhaps the Uluburun shipwreck, if future research reveals it to be from the Levantine coast, is a vessel of this sort.
The ship models found at Byblos are copies of Egyptian ships or ship models. Previous identifications in which the Byblian models were considered to represent Syro-Canaanite ships emphasize the dangers of labeling iconographic representations based on their find locations. The Iniwia ships are imaginative creations made up of an amalgamation of elements derived from different sources that never existed on their own.
Ships and traders of Cyprus may have played a crucial role as middlemen between Egypt, the Syro-Canaanite coast, and the Aegean world during the Late Bronze Age. The Amarna tablets strongly support this conclusion if Alashia equates with Cyprus, as seems to be indicated by EA 114. Even without this document, however, there is a strong argument for considerable sea trade by Cypriots at that time.
The Karnak anchor indicates that Cypriot seafarers were reaching Egypt in pharaonic times; Cypro-Minoan texts found at Ugarit suggest a Cypriot presence there. Furthermore, Cypro-Minoan signs incised on Mycenaean pottery on the Greek mainland may indicate Cypriot merchants, located in Greece, controlling at least some of the trade with their homeland. The large quantities of anchors found on Cypriot land sites, many of which are dedicated in temples, further emphasize the importance of seafaring in Late Bronze Age Cyprus.
The three ship models from Kazaphani and Maroni, if my reading of them is correct, represent an indigenous type of beamy, planked, seagoing merchant ship. Most of the ship images from Cyprus, however, represent foreign ships, mainly of Achaean (Sea Peoples?) origin.
The primary class of craft depicted in iconography during the Aegean Early Bronze Age was a narrow longship with a high stem and a low stern. Lacking a sail and propelled by rows of paddlers, this craft first appears after it had already evolved considerably. Of the vessels used to bring Melian obsidian to the mainland in the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods and of the ships used to colonize Crete in the Neolithic period—the record is a blank.
In the Early Minoan III period, a new type of ship came into use in the Aegean. And although never shown with the sail raised during the Early Minoan III-Middle Minoan periods, these vessels did use a sail. Little can be said of this class beyond noting that to carry a sail without an outrigger, it must have been greater in beam than the earlier longships. Presumably these craft are the ancestral prototypes for the large Minoan/Cycladic ship type depicted at Thera.
The Minoans were, it seems, the marine explorers par excellence of the Late Bronze Age. Although their first contact with Egypt probably took place along the Syro-Canaanite coast, the Minoans likely deserve credit for opening the trade routes between the Aegean and both the Syro-Canaanite coast and Egypt. If so, they may have been the earliest seafarers to intentionally cross the Mediterranean on an open sea route (from Crete to Egypt) on a regular basis.
The Theran material is unusually rich and clarifies other representations of Minoan ships. The waterborne procession at Thera must be studied in the context of its Minoan/Cycladic milieu. The Theran scenes, and with them virtually all iconographic materials depicting Minoan ships (or ships’ parts), are directly connected to Minoan cult practices in combination with cultic ship races/processions. These are the same kinds of ships, it is reasonable to presume, that played a crucial role in the relationships between Minoan Crete and its neighbors, whatever the political and economic reality reflected in the archaeological record. There may have been (and probably were) some differences between Cycladic ships and Minoan ships, but at the present level of information it is not possible to pinpoint specific differences.
Thera was abandoned before the final cataclysm. What became of its people? To where did the inhabitants of Thera emigrate? And is there any connection between this event and the sudden appearance of Minoan-style frescoes from Middle Bronze Age contexts in Syria, Israel, and Egypt? These questions remain to be answered.
Of prime importance in understanding the waterborne procession at Thera is a seal from Thebes that proves conclusively that the procession/race was linked with the vegetation/fertility cult. The miniature frieze apparently depicts a yearly Aegean springtime festival connected with this cult. The procession must have held a tremendous fascination for the inhabitants of the Aegean. Apparently a race carried out over a short course, it began at a time when paddled longboats were used and may well predate the Bronze Age. The annual procession continued at least to the end of the Bronze Age, and memories of it may have lingered on as late as the Hellenistic period.
Mycenaean maritime trading outside the Aegean has been highly overrated in the past by Hellenocentric scholars. The sudden disappearance of Aegeans representing the west in the Egyptian cosmology at the time of Amenhotep II’s accession may point to the end of direct Aegeo-Egyptian contact following the fall of the autonomous Minoan culture at the end of the Late Minoan IB period. Other evidence is consistent with this conclusion. This direct communication does not seem to have been reopened by the Mycenaeans. The fact that no names from the Linear B onomasticon can be identified at Ugarit further supports this judgment.
The evidence cited for the presumed involvement of Mycenaeans in trade with the eastern Mediterranean is based primarily on quantities of fourteenth- and thirteenth-century Mycenaean ceramics found on foreign shores. However, pottery alone cannot establish the ethnic identity of the hull in which it was transported.
Apart from the handful of exceptions discussed above, artifacts lacking inscriptions can only give a positive or tentatively negative answer to the existence of trade. Furthermore, the kind of trade involved—whether direct or indirect—cannot be deduced from the finds alone. Thus, the onus of proof for extensive direct Mycenaean trade contacts with the Syro-Canaanite coast and Egypt must fall on those scholars who argue for its existence. For the present at least, this evidence is lacking.
On the other hand, the role played by ships and seafaring in the expansion of the Mycenaean culture overseas has, I believe, been decidedly underemphasized in the past. This phenomenon, a Mycenaean hallmark, could only have evolved in a culture that had highly developed its seafaring capabilities. If the Pylos “Rower Tablets” refer to preparations for the abandonment of Pylos and the emigration to another site by certain echelons of the population, then the other Pylos tablets may also portray the same event. They could, therefore, greatly help in clarifying bureaucratic aspects of the organization for Mycenaean seaborne migrations and colonization in the Late Helladic IIIA–IIIB.
Pylos would then also represent a microcosm of the great seaborne ethnic movement that was soon to follow, in which masses of people migrated eastward. It might better allow us to understand the structure behind the establishment of sites like Maa-Palaeokastro and Sinda in Cyprus as well as Ashdod and Ashkelon in Israel, in which Late Helladic IIIC 1b pottery has been found.
In the Hittite texts, Ahhiyawan ships are recorded in use by raiders who seem to have had a predilection for coastal depredations, primarily aimed at capturing living cargoes of the two-legged type. This also fits well with the Egyptian evidence for waterborne raiding. The ships were also used for rapid disengagements. All of this suggests that the vessels and their crews would have been well suited as shipborne mercenaries, and it may be in this role that Tudkhalia IV denies them access to Amurru.
The single most important iconographic document for the ships of the Sea Peoples is the Medinet Habu tableau. Unfortunately, because of the ravages of time, much evidence, along with the paint and plaster, has disappeared from the wall. My reading of the ship that served as the prototype for the five depictions at Medinet Habu is that (with the exception of the manner in which the bird head is affixed at stem and stern, which suggests influences from farther north) it is identical to portrayals of Late Helladic IIIB and IIIC oared vessels. This means that the carriers of the Late Helladic IIIC 1b pottery are either to be identified as fleeing Mycenaeans known by another name to the cultures confronted by them or that they included a considerable number of Mycenaean refugees within them.
The bird-head devices on the Sea Peoples’ ships at Medinet Habu are a link in a long chain of tradition that spans at least four millennia. This symbol—perhaps originating as an epiphany of the Old European Great Goddess—appears on the stems and sterns of ships from the Middle Helladic period down to the present day. For most of this time, mariners were probably not even aware of why they used this symbol in its myriad forms or what it originally represented. Certainly a modern Greek Orthodox boat owner would be horrified to learn that his vessel carries the symbol of a pre-Christian earth deity!
The multiplicity of the bird’s beak may have strengthened the magic inherent in the stem and stern devices. This would explain why the aphlaston developed from a multiple-beaked bird head.
That some connection existed between the Sea Peoples and the Urnfield cultures is self-evident, but the nature of this relationship requires additional elucidation. One important avenue of research would be a serious review of the Urnfield level at Hama.
The ability to reach shipwrecks on the seabed has opened up a new dimension in the research of seafaring. The significant contribution of the Uluburun wreck is an expression of this. Already it has given us a hitherto undreamed-of view of the lading and workings of a large open-water Late Bronze Age merchant vessel.
The problem of the Uluburun ship’s ethnic identity, and for that matter of all Bronze Age wrecks, remains the single most difficult question to solve in shipwreck archaeology. The interpretation of personal objects vis-à-vis ethnic character is particularly problematic. The Uluburun wreck, which is maddeningly eclectic in personal finds, raises the question of what evidence is acceptable in identifying its home port.
Concerning the general outlines of the various facets of the art and functions of seafaring in the Late Bronze Age, several considerations are worthy of mention. One particular Egyptian term, wnḫ, may mean planks used for hull strakes. Because of problems of interpretation, however, many of the other technical terms in the ancient texts treating ship construction remain obscure. There is much room here for future cooperation between nautical archaeologists and linguists in interpreting these texts.
Egyptian ships traveling on the Red Sea were of necessity transversely lashed. Although we cannot be entirely sure, it is very likely that Egyptians also sailed the Mediterranean in lashed ships, at least until the reign of Thutmose III. The facts that Hatshepsut’s ships were lashed and that they continue a class of ships used during the Old Kingdom on the Mediterranean strongly support this conclusion.
If this were not true, then what form of construction might the Egyptians have used in their Mediterranean vessels? They employed mortise-and-tenon joinery in their Nilotic ship construction, yet only adopted the system of locking the mortise-and-tenon joinery with wooden pegs very late. Without locking the tenons, this form of joinery could not be used on open-water craft. It seems that, at least before Thutmose III, the Egyptians did not need to use pegged joinery. Unpegged joinery sufficed for their Nilotic craft, and lashed craft could be used in the Mediterranean, as they were in the Red Sea.
Perhaps pegged joinery evolved in Syro-Canaanite ship construction. If so, this technique, along with other elements of Mediterranean construction, may have arrived in Egypt as early as the reign of Thutmose III. The appearance of pegged mortise-and-tenon joinery at Uluburun suggests that by the Late Bronze Age, this technique had been introduced for use on deep-water ships. Pegged mortise-and-tenon joinery may have developed from a type of pegged sewn construction. Alternatively, it may have developed directly from unpegged mortise-and-tenon joinery—although judging from the Egyptian evidence, this seems unlikely.
The boom-footed rig used during the Bronze Age may have developed on the Nile in Predynastic times. The rig used by seagoing ships in Egypt and the Syro-Canaanite littoral seems to have been virtually identical. The sail was spread by raising the yard to the masthead with a pair of halyards. The yard and boom were supported on a system of lifts; the boom was lashed to the mast. It was an awkward rig at best that only worked well with the wind nearly astern. The Aegean rig, while also boom-footed, seems to have been a variant with several peculiarities. The use of this square rig had a profound effect on the capabilities of ship movement and defined the use of sea routes.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Late Bronze Age rig is the lack of shrouds for lateral support on seagoing ships. In their place, there evolved a system of cables that secured the lower part of the mast and which were anchored in some manner laterally inside the hull. A form of this rigging existed on Old Kingdom seagoing and river craft. In the Late Bronze Age, evidence for these cables is found on the seagoing ships of Egypt (Deir el Bahri), the Syro-Canaanite littoral (Kenamun), and Cyprus (the Kazaphani and Maroni models). Lateral support and leeward drift are most pronounced when the wind is abeam a vessel. The lateral cables used in place of shrouds, along with the possible introversion of the keel on seagoing ships, may indicate that Bronze Age sailors, with their clumsy boom-footed rig, did not use the sail unless the wind was directly (or nearly directly) astern.
M. Liverani, in his usual insightful manner, makes an interesting comment concerning the restructuring of the regional economy of the East after the cataclysms that ended the Late Bronze Age: “As for sailing techniques, I personally am not aware of precise innovative elements introduced about 1200 B.C. which could be said to characterize Iron Age I shipping in contrast to Late Bronze Age navigation. However, I am strongly inclined to postulate some such innovation, since we get the impression of a sudden widening of sea routes and of a technical and operative freedom.”1
The nautical innovation that Liverani intuitively postulates is, of course, the brailed rig, which makes its appearance—after a gestation period—in the eastern Mediterranean ca. 1200 B.C. This new rig allowed for better usage of the wind and propelled the Iron Age cultures into new vistas in seafaring, opening up the entire Mediterranean and beyond to intense seaborne traffic.
Stone anchors are one of the most important threads of evidence for Late Bronze Age Mediterranean seafaring. Still, much about them remains enigmatic. If shfifonim do actually represent stone anchors, then they assume a well-cut stone anchor prototype that has yet to be found in the Sea of Galilee. Perhaps shfifonim were patterned after anchors used by seagoing ships in the Early Bronze Age on the Mediterranean. Interestingly, no Early Bronze Age remains are known from Israel’s shores despite the large number of wrecks and cargo sites that litter her Mediterranean coast. This may result from several factors: seafaring in the Early Bronze Age may have been an extremely rare phenomenon, the coastal profile may have changed significantly in the past five thousand years so that wrecks are buried in areas not currently surveyed, or Early Bronze Age seafaring practices were in some way different from those of later periods.
Ships carried quantities of anchors. At least some of them stationed in the bow could, and were, carried upright, no doubt locked securely into the vessel’s superstructure. This would have prevented clutter in the bow and also perhaps facilitated their rapid deployment when necessary. Spare anchors were carried in the hold, where they also served as ballast. Stone blanks for anchors could have been picked up en route and prepared either at the quarry site or on board ship.
Not all anchors on a single ship were necessarily identical. Thus, at Uluburun some anchors have square holes, others are biconical. At Naveh Yam, some anchors have apical rope grooves while others lack this characteristic. At Wadi Gawasis, the anchor-stele-base of Ankhow’s stele lacks the normal L-shaped basal hole. Small anchors found together with groups of large ones may be interpreted in several ways. At Naveh Yam, Uluburun, and Wadi Gawasis, they are best explained as spares for the ship’s boat.
A typical “Canaanite” anchor remains to be defined and requires study. Based on the many anchors on the Israeli seacoast, one might tentatively suggest a shape with a flat base, rounded top, and asymmetrical sides.
A variety of routes interlaced the Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. Most routes followed—but probably did not hug—the coastline: the only truly open-water routes were the direct runs from the Aegean and Cyprus to Egypt. Under favorable conditions, the longest open-water route could be crossed in three to five days. Thus, during this period and in this region, the division of seagoing ships into coasters and open-water craft has little meaning.
No artifactual evidence for navigational instruments during the Late Bronze Age is known. And yet it is possible, and indeed quite probable, that systems of navigation, which would have left no trace in the archaeological record, had evolved by that time.
All legs of the counterclockwise Mediterranean circuit proposed by the excavators of the Uluburun wreck are documented in textual and archaeological evidence. However, not all ships sailing from the Levant to the Aegean necessarily continued in a circuit. Sinaranu’s ships, for example, are described as returning from Caphtor. Presumably, these are Ugaritic ships that sailed on the run directly to and from the Aegean.
The cargo on board the Uluburun wreck is perhaps most expressive of the many facets of Late Bronze Age sea trade. Whatever the identity of the traders on board when she came to grief, this shipwreck represents a large—but perhaps not the largest—type of Late Bronze Age merchant ship. The preliminary picture received from Uluburun is that trade was infinitely more complex than was previously thought: the ship’s cargo was exceptionally varied. The wreck also illustrates the mechanics of indirect trade, in which two cultures can trade commodities without ever meeting.
The identification of the contents of the closed containers on board through sieving has created a new dimension of the understanding of trade. Particularly striking is the large quantity of terebinth resin, valued as incense or perhaps for use in embalming. Wood was a major trade item, particularly for timber-starved Egypt. Much of this wood was ready for use, a fact that may have been an influence (although perhaps not a primary one) on Egyptian shipwrights in adopting Syro-Canaanite shipbuilding techniques.
Besides the cultures discussed above, many smaller ethnic groups were probably active in trade, although they are now undefinable in the archaeological/historical record.
The waterline ram had not been introduced as a nautical weapon during the Bronze Age. Thus, ships used for military or piratical purposes served primarily as rapid transports for deploying land troops. In marine battles, vessels served mainly as mobile firing platforms, not unlike chariots in contemporaneous land-based warfare. The only specifically nautical weapon was the grapnel, used in capsizing enemy craft after the defenders had been incapacitated by long- or medium-range weapons. Ships were also used successfully during sieges against coastal cities. Techniques for combating various forms of piracy and coastal marauding included “early warning systems” and intelligence reports traded among allies.
It appears that marine affairs were circumscribed by a recognized code of laws that existed at least along the coast of the Levant. This was a prerequisite of maritime trading, since only with a set of laws could the nautical merchant travel with a reasonable amount of safety.
Although trade in luxury items, easily identifiable in the archaeological record, stops at the beginning of the Iron Age, it is unlikely that trade, travel, or transport by ships on the sea lanes ceased during that time. Ugarit was destroyed ca. 1187 B.C. Wenamun, visiting the Levantine coast a scant century later, found a vibrant panoply of trading communities there. These consisted of a lively mixture of newly arrived immigrants and descendants of Syro-Canaanite traders who were, as Wenamun walked among them, evolving into the Phoenician culture.
Much has been written concerning the overlordship of the seas during the Late Bronze Age: of Minoan thalassocracies and Egyptian hegemonies, of Mycenaean and Syro-Canaanite trading empires. But these are viewpoints imported into the past instead of perceptions of actual past realities. The seafaring world of the Bronze Age was far richer, more diversified, and more complex than that. Its main attribute was a multiplicity of interactions by a panoply of peoples.
Of this world, and of the ships that made it possible, in truth, we know very little.